1972 Chevrolet Camaro - Twin Spin

Being a hot rod enthusiast, you are probably caught up in the aura of the ’67–’69 Camaro, finding those three years to be the pinnacle of Camarodom. So it may come as a surprise that when the ’70 Camaro (or ’70½, as some have tagged them) hit the magazines and showrooms, it was considered the ne plus ultra of Bow Tie execution -- the standard by which all Camaros, all muscle cars really, would be judged into perpetuity. It had such sophistication and extreme presence with its “European styling” that it was quite naturally the top of the affordable-performance-car mountain, possibly even supplanting the Corvette, which received only a mild facelift that same year. Even Motor Trend gushed saying, “Everything else you knew just went obsolete. The shape of the ’70s is the shape of the decade’s first machines, the Camaro and Firebird.”

None of that backstory entered into the owner Ron Lallo’s desire to build a Grand Touring tour-de-force ’72 Camaro; he wanted to build it because it was the same year he was born. So much for bucking the ingrained hot rod status quo.

2/16To accommodate the Nelson Racing Engine’s turbos and plumbing, the 427 small-block was set back 3 inches and the core support was moved forward 3 inches. In these long-hood, short-deck cars, that’s an easier proposition than more conventionally proportioned cars. All of the finishes lack high polishing and have a slight gold or dirty cast to tie everything together.

Still, he couldn’t have picked a better car to pull off his dream of a second-gen Camaro to bomb along the highway in comfort, with excess fast to get from his home in Bakersfield, California, to Las Vegas. Those were Lallo’s parameters as laid out to Steve Strope, proprietor of Pure Vision Design (PureVisionDesign.com) in Simi Valley, California.

Strope’s magic comes from deciphering what the owner wants, then adding what Strope feels the car should be (based on his instincts and the direction of the industry) and framing a theme around it. Like those movie pitches you hear about where the director goes to the studio heads and says something like, “The idea behind this movie is like a Gone With the Wind, but with Martians instead of Confederates.”

3/16The rear pan is custom-built for the flat-oval exhaust. The oil-rubbed bronze paint in the wheel centers and suspension components is meant to pull out some of the gold base found in the Tungsten Silver exterior color. “It gives the car flavor,” says Pure Vision Design’s Steve Strope. “The big modern wheels, big modern colors, turbos, leather and Alcantara, handmade everything -- it’s all about every piece working together for a theme.”

The game plan has to be mine and not yours. It doesn’t make your game plan wrong; it’s just that I’m not your guy.

The theme Strope picked was “GT.” A “proper Grand Touring car,” he says. A Camaro that’s like an Aston Martin: subtle, smooth, and fast as hell. These metaphors are what Strope calls his “plausible anchor of reality.” “It gives me a good map for what my decisions can and cannot be, keeps the customer grounded, and keeps us on the same page before the big checks start rolling and the parts start getting modified,” he says.

That metaphor is always what Lallo had in mind for his Camaro; he just never framed it like that. So as the fairly nice driver went from one shop to the next in search of a builder who could actually do their job, it would lose a few parts here, a few parts there, until it ended up at Pure Vision’s shop as almost a bare hulk. It’s a fairly common occurrence where parts disappear as projects get scooped up to go searching for a shop to complete them, and it usually dooms a car.

Somewhere along that Candy Cane Lane of shop hops, Lallo decided he wanted twin turbos. And then he saw the Nelson Racing Engines “mirrored image” twin-turbo package where the turbos’ compressor housings mirror each other to achieve perfection for those seeking symmetry throughout the universe. When Lallo came to Strope with his symmetry-and-shell dream, Strope was game but warned, “This engine will affect your car financially and fabrication-wise from bumper to bumper.” In other words, nothing this bad gets that good cheaply.

4/16Who’s to say a ’69 Camaro is a better-looking car? When the second-generation Camaro came out, it was hailed as a styling tour de force. There have been rumors that the next-generation Camaro will be loosely based on this design.

As Strope puts it, “What Ron needed to understand was that an engine like the type Nelson Engines puts together requires special hardware.” He fit the car with a new stainless fuel tank, dual-pump fuel system, and many injectors -- like 16. Why two fuel pumps and 16 injectors?

Strope says, “This is a cast-iron 427 small-block that you can drive anywhere on the primary eight injectors. Nothing is twitchy or weird, but when you roll into the throttle, the turbos make 38 psi of boost and eight more injectors kick in (for a total of 16) fed by that second fuel pump, and you’ve got stupid power.” A light dyno pull on the engine created 23 psi of boost and yielded 1,320 hp at 6,100 rpm, burning 91-octane fuel, according to Strope. “And I have a digital printout and video of the pull should anyone doubt the numbers,” says Strope somewhat defiantly.

Nelson Racing Engines also fabbed the alien-looking intake with an air-to-water intercooler. Tied into the turbos is a polished stainless-steel flat-oval exhaust fabbed by Aaron Cranford. Says Strope about the sparkly tubes, “Polished exhaust is garish to me, but set against the Tungsten Silver paint underneath the car, it just pops.” This whole system spins a T-56 six-speed transmission, custom-prepared by Modern Drive Line in Caldwell, Idaho, with cryogenically treated and polished gears.

8/16The twin-turbo Camaro became a study in packaging as the turbos, wastegates, blow-off valves, air-conditioning compressor, and intercooler had to live with the engine and radiator, while the wiring bundle for the 16 fuel injectors and two fuel pumps had to be accommodated.

Pure Vision created the engine and transmission mounts to set the engine back 3 inches from stock then loaded the engine compartment with the Nelson Turbos and a custom Ron Davis radiator that sits 3 inches forward of the stock location.

One of the hallmarks of a Strope build is the subtle body mods without any in-your-face changes deemed necessary by some builders. True, we like to see compelling body changes, but we also question some of the change-for-the-sake-of-change taking place in shops with the clients capable of cost-is-no-object hijinks. So things like the Aston Martin DBS door handles and custom heat extractors in the hood don’t deviate too far from stock -- nor do the Custom Work Products (CustomWorksPerformance.net) carbon-fiber bumpers pulled tight to the body and the Anvil Auto (AnvilAuto.com) laundry list of carbon-fiber body panels ranging from the hood and front fenders to decklid and rear spoiler.

For Strope and Lallo, it was the Aston Martin Tungsten Silver with Bitter Chocolate interior combination that sealed the deal. “These cars are all art projects for me,” explains Strope. “Use of color was important throughout.” Strope can wax on about color and how important it is to his builds. “The Tungsten Silver with that soft gold base underneath went so well with the Bitter Chocolate interior by Eric Thorsen Custom Interiors (ThorsenCustom.com). The car, the suspension, and the rear axle control arms are all painted oil-rubbed bronze, which allows every piece to visually work together.” Strope says he “doesn’t like letting anything in that’s out of place.”

Once everything was roughed out, it was sent to Mick Jenkins at Mick’s Custom Paint in Pomona, California, for the paint and glass. ARP fasteners were used to button up the Camaro.

I don’t have the blinders that a lot of my muscle-car brethren have. I pull from lots of different places, from racing to European sports cars and Indy to drag racing.

So it begs the question, does this become Strope’s vision or the customer’s? Strope’s quick answer, “Mine.” Then he adds, “As long as what the customer is requesting doesn’t break a boundary of what I wish to represent my shop, I will build to the customer’s request.” Honestly, with shops that continue to have cars featured in the magazines, this is probably more common than first imagined. The late builder Barry Lobeck used to say, “I sell the same parts to customers that I use on my own projects, but most of the time their vehicles don’t turn out looking like anything coming from my shop.”

Strope says, “The game plan has to be mine and not yours. It doesn’t make your game plan wrong; it’s just that I’m not your guy. I turn down a lot of work. I have to like the car and the guy.” Fair enough. It works for Strope as his limiting approach to customer outreach and tepid economy have garnered him a long waiting list of projects slated for the Pure Vision Design transformation.

Debuting at the ’13 SEMA Show in Las Vegas, the Camaro rolled away with the prestigious GM Design Award for Best In Show. Having won Ford’s Best In Show award the previous year for his Martini Racing ’66 Mustang (“T-5R Martini Racing Mustang,” June ’13), you could say that Pure Vision Design has captured the attention and accolades of the Detroit car companies and, in turn, has a corner on the big SEMA Show awards. Says Strope, “The awards are just icing on the cake. I sweat where lines go and hiding electronics and fasteners and what’s polished and machined, all to evoke this emotion from people who see these cars. Some cars look cool, some sexy, and some bad ass and mean, so what I do gets people to think and feel a certain way. I like to do that.”

14/16A custom-built Tremec T-56 six-speed was prepared by Modern DriveLine, which includes cryogenically treated polished gears, a Quick Time bellhousing, and McLeod Street Twin clutch.

’72 Second-Gens: Strikes, Split Bumpers, and the Last of the Big-Blocks

The ’72 Camaro production was low due to a 174-day UAW strike at the Norwood, Ohio, assembly plant, for a total production of 68,656 cars. When the workers came back, there were more than 1,100 partially assembled Camaros that had to be scrapped because they couldn’t be retrofitted for the ’73 locomotive bumpers mandated by the government.

The year ’72 was the last year for the SS 396 and SS 350 designations, with only 970 SS 396s built and the last year a big-block option was available in a Camaro.

The substantial drop in horsepower from ’71–’72 was due to a switch from SAE gross power ratings to SAE net power ratings, which were more representative of the actual power made at the crankshaft. Thus, the 350 LT1 went from 330 hp in ’71 to 255 hp in ’72, while the 396 big-block dropped from 300 hp to 240 hp.

The second-generation Camaro continued in production with myriad changes, including soft, energy-absorbing front and rear bumpers and a wrapping rear window through ’81.

Lallo’s ’72 Camaro has the Rally Sport split bumper appearance option, which was available for any ’70–’73 Camaro from six-cylinder to big-block. It does not denote a Camaro as having the Z28 option. Some standard-nose Camaros have split bumpers with the parking lights under the bumpers, but those are converted and not true RS front ends.

Second-Generation Camaro: Worth The Wait

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Steve Strope won’t build a car unless he likes the project and likes the customer. One of the binding common interests between the Camaro’s owner Ron Lallo and Strope was their involvement in BMX bike racing in their younger days. Strope rode, raced, and jumped BMX, and today buys and sells vintage BMX bikes. He has a collection of them hanging from his shop walls, so when Lallo first visited Strope to talk about the Camaro project,they discovering their BMX connection. Lallo was a factory-sponsored rider for the Diamond Back BMX bike company in the Expert class. Strope decided to enhance their mutual interest in all things Camaro and BMX by secretly building a ’95 Univega 24-inch bike in the likeness of the Camaro, having the same painter, upholsterer, and polisher apply the same materials and craftsmanship to the bike. Two weeks before the ’13 SEMA Show when Lallo visited the shop to see the Camaro still scattered in pieces, Strope presented him with this “Gazelle BMX” named after Lallo’s transportation company, courtesy of Pure Vision Design.